1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a deinterlacing method and device. More specifically, the present invention relates to a deinterlacing method and device for converting an interlaced image to a progressive image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Deinterlacing is a technique that converts an interlaced image to a progressive image. The most common deinterlacing technique is reproducing a TV broadcast or video recorded on a DVD for display on a computer monitor.
FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram of a conventional deinterlacing device. The following will now explain a deinterlacing procedure executed by the deinterlacing device shown in FIG. 1.
At first, a motion vector calculator 30 calculates a motion vector using a current field and a previous field stored in a current field memory 10 and a previous field memory 20, respectively. A motion compensator 40 executes motion compensation on the current field using the motion vector calculated by the motion vector calculator 30. Then, a field merging unit 50 merges a ‘current field’ stored in the current field memory 10 with a ‘motion-compensated current field’ generated by the motion compensator 40, to generate a progressive image.
As explained above, deinterlacing involves motion compensation using a calculated motion vector. Therefore, it is very important to calculate the motion vector as accurately as possible for proper deinterlacing. When deinterlacing is done properly, high quality progressive images (that is, vivid images) are provided to a user.
For the calculation of a motion vector, a current field is partitioned into a plurality of blocks, and a motion vector is calculated for each of the blocks. For instance, a related deinterlacing device usually partitions a current field into a plurality of blocks, each block being 8×8 in size.
To calculate a motion vector more accurately, however, it is more efficient to partition a high frequency area into small blocks, and a low frequency area into large blocks. Nevertheless, conventional deinterlacing methods execute deinterlacing by dividing a current field into fixed size blocks (such as 8×8). As a result, deinterlacing is often executed in a non-optimal manner.